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A S C R A P B O O K O F S O L U T I O N S F O R T H E P H O T O G R A P H E R
Reviews of photography products that enhance the enjoyment of taking pictures. Published frequently but irregularly.
A Comment on Comments
12 December 2012
Designing this publication has been a thrill (one enhanced by our decision to do it in just a few days). The indispensable ingredient has been having a guiding principle, the wall to which the spaghetti should stick, so to speak.
That guiding principle, a journalistic variation on the Golden Rule, was to ask ourselves, as a reader, what were the sites (among dozens) we enjoyed visiting every day.
Surprisingly few.
That, we thought, was because surprisingly few are designed for the reader. Mostly they're as busy as children who have been trapped in the back seat of the family SUV.
This site isn't busy (in that sense). We've minimized the noise to make it a pleasant experience.
But should we, we asked ourselves, go so far as to ban comments?
Moderated comments, we should quickly add. It's no secret that if you let anonymous commenters have the floor, they'll make a mess. But why not register contributors and moderate their contributions to encourage discussion?
Two reasons.
The second is technical. We really didn't want to spend our time maintaining or updating a commenting system. This site is hand-built and we like it that way because it gives us control over what we do here. Why bog things down with the task of moderating comments?
But the first reason is much simpler. We ourselves never comment (voluntarily) on other sites. Not after a great Dick Cavett piece in the New York Times. Not after an intriguing Ctein column at The Online Photographer. Not about the 49ers or the Giants on SFGate.
And even funnier, the sites we most enjoy visiting every day, invite no comment. (OK, that would be Daring Fireball and Swiss Miss, two reasons to love the Internet.)
So no comments.
But that doesn't mean we aren't interested in what you think or won't be grateful to you for pointing out something amiss. In fact, we encourage you to improve this experience for both of us by, well, emailing us. Just click on the Feeback button at the bottom of any story to comment on it.
We're in the habit of answering everybody who writes to us. Which often leads to a mutually profitable conversation that itself just might find itself tagged on to the end of the story.
And when the subject blossoms into something of more general interest, you can expect it will turn into a story of its own here. Promise.